I am honoured and not a little surprised to see this very site appear in leading science journal ‘Science’. Every issue of the journal contains a section called ‘Netwatch’, featuring a crop of recommended online resources – the “best of the Web in Science”. To see what ‘Science’ had to say about the ‘Plesiosaur Directory’ in the latest issue (1st...
South Dublin City, 6.30am, Thursday 10th of August 2006. I clamber into the passenger seat of a 4×4 – destination London. My travelling companions are Colin in the driver’s seat, and two suspiciously large wooden crates. A monster lurks inside: the skull of the Dublin plesiosaur. The plan is to transport the fossil plesiosaur known as Rhomaleosaurus cramptoni to the...
A four metre long plesiosaur from Yorkshire known as the ‘Speeton Plesiosaur’ after the place where it was discovered, is now fully prepared from the rock and ready to be displayed in the Rotunda Museum in Scarborough, once it opens in 2007. The specimen is unnamed but certainly represents a new species of long-necked plesiosaur. It was temporarily displayed at...
I finally found the time to visit the James Mitchel Museum at the University of Galway, Ireland. The main plesiosaur in the museum is on display, mounted high on the wall at the far end of the museum (figured below). The fossil is from Lyme Regis and is identified as Plesiosaurus dolichodeirus. Most unstudied plesiosaurs such as this are labelled...
An exhibit in the Submarine Museum, Gosport, England, reveals how submarines might have been named after extinct marine reptiles. The Inspecting captain of Submarine proposed the idea in 1902 but the suggestion was quashed by superiors. Seems a shame to me! The exhibit reads as follows (kindly transcribed by Simon. M. Clabby): Bacon and Dinosaurs!!! Captain Reginald Bacon was the...
The unveiling of a new plesiosaur mount formed the highlight of a Mini-Symposium dedicated to plesiosaurs, held at the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Centre, USA, last month (25 February 2006). Five Speakers presented talks at the event, discussing their research into plesiosaurs in the USA (pictured below alongside the new mount). The plesiosaur on display was discovered in the...
The almost complete three-dimensional skeleton of a plesiosaur from the Lower Jurassic of Lyme Regis, the famous fossil-hunting spot in Dorset, England, sold at auction last December (2005) at a closing bid of £30000 (some web-sites report the figure as over £35000). The specimen was collected about 20 years ago and is estimated to be 3.5m long. It has been...